Searching for AGN in Green Pea galaxies

Green Peas (GP) are a class of low-redshift galaxies with extreme emission lines. They are considered to be the best analogs of high-redshift Lyman-alpha galaxies as well as strongest known Lyman continuum leakers. In addition, they also contain other high ionization emission lines such as HeII and [NeIII], that indicate the presence of a hard ionizing source. With a quest to determine the extent to which these emission lines are powered by star-formation and/or accretion due to active galactic nuclei, we have searched for AGN in GPs based on mid-infrared colors and variability from WISE. We found that the AGN candidates selected by each of these methods can be quite different, although some overlap exists. Through this work, we highlight the importance of employing variability as a diagnostic in selecting AGN candidates that can be optically-hidden, obscured and/or low-luminosity AGN.